Pottsville head coach Maria Sherakas kept waiting.
After her Crimson Tide girls’ volleyball team had won the first set of Tuesday’s District 11 Class AAA Tournament first-round match against Stroudsburg in the Pottsville boys’ gymnasium, she was waiting for the breakout moment when her team would take command of the match.
It never happened.
Led by junior Emem Inyang’s 19 kills and Britney Hewitt’s 16 kills, Stroudsburg swept the final three sets en route to a 23-25, 25-18, 25-20, 25-19 victory that eliminated the Crimson Tide.
Stroudsburg (12-10) advances to play top-seeded Parkland in Thursday’s quarterfinals.
“Losing is one thing, but
we lose and don’t play to our potential,” Sherakas said. “That’s what I’m more upset about.”
Pottsville (10-6) had a chance to send a message of superiority early in the opening set after the Tide’s Mariah Curry included two aces in her seven-point service run that gave Pottsville a 13-4 lead.
Instead, after Stroudsburg scored a point and regained service, Hewitt replied with an eight-point service run of her own during which Pottsville errors accounted for all of Stroudsburg’s points. The spurt allowed the Mounties to tie the set at 13-13.
It was an omen for the Tide, who could never muster enough intensity to overcome the Mounties.
“A lot of it was they capitalized on our errors,” Sherakas said. “We made too many hitting, serving, setting errors and passing errors.”
Despite Stroudsburg’s surge, the Tide came away with the victory in the first set.
With the set tied for the seventh time at 23-23, Pottsville’s Kyra Varano — one of four seniors who played in their final match — took one of junior Leah Guzick’s 21 assists and sent the ball down the sideline for the 24-23 lead. On the next point, Pottsville’s Kasie Shaw made a diving save that sailed over the net and found open space for set point.
After that, Stroudsburg’s second-year head coach, Anna Spangler, talked to her ninth-seeded Mounties.
“We weren’t communicating well and, yeah, they weren’t moving their feet,” Spangler said.
Even with that appeal, though, it took time for the Mounties to take control. The second set was tied eight times, the last at 16-16. That occurred during a four-point service run by Stroudsburg junior Natalia McLaren.
A kill by Hewitt gave Stroudsburg the lead. McLaren hit an ace and Hewitt blocked Curry’s kill attempt for a Stroudsburg point for a 19-16 lead. The Mounties kept the edge to tie the match.
Senior Samantha Kehoe then served Stroudsburg to a 5-0 lead in the third set. Though Pottsville eventually pulled within a point at 17-16, a Tide service error allowed the Mounties to avoid the tying point. Stroudsburg won the third set despite five kills by the Tide’s Kyra Schenk,who finished with six in the match.
Inyang then dominated the fourth set with six kills, including a shot off two Pottsville blockers that broke a 15-15 deadlock. Inyang then served the next four points, giving Stroudsburg a 20-15 lead that the Tide could not overcome.
Stroudsburg’s Kristen Kimpel had 31 assists, while Pottsville gained seven kills from Curry and eight digs from senior Kendra Boris.
The win sends Stroudsburg to a Thursday quarterfinal match at Parkland, which has already beaten the Mounties twice this season.
Pottsville, which loses seniors Curry, Boris, Varano and Brianne Verdier to graduation, will look ahead to the 2015 campaign, Sherakas’ second after her return to the coaching helm this season.
“I think we have to come back a lot stronger, more aggressive,” Sherakas said. “We have to work hard. We have a good group of underclassmen that hopefully will step up to the plate.”